


broken promises

by ApatheticRobots



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, M/M, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:35:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26754406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApatheticRobots/pseuds/ApatheticRobots
Summary: “There’s one,” he says, “with a scar across his face. You leave that one for me.”“I will,” you say. “I promise,” you say. And the two of you don’t break promises.
Relationships: Breakdown/Knock Out
Comments: 4
Kudos: 33





	broken promises

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate Universe - Swap; Knock Out got captured by MECH instead.
> 
> Unbeta'd

“It looks ugly, right?” he says, "be honest with me."

He won’t look at you, except in flickering glances, as though he can’t bear to see your reaction. And as much as you wish you didn’t, you understand why he’s worried. On any other mech it wouldn’t be a pretty picture. The patch, while perfectly shaped and detailed with lights that glow red to match the rest of him, is still built with function over style in mind. It sticks out like a sore thumb against the flawless shine of the rest of him.

Despite all that, though, he’s as beautiful as ever. You tell him such, once you’re both off-shift and no one’s going to come knocking at your door for any reason. You pull him close and press kisses against the scars criss-crossing his plating and the patch covering the void where his optic ought to be. He lets you. You can tell he wants to believe you, even if he really doesn’t. Can’t.

“I’ll kill them all,” you say, with your hand over his spark and your lips against his audial. “Every single one of them. Crush ‘em like scrap.”

You know he needs comfort more than combat right now, but words have never been your strong suit. Either of your strong suits. You don’t have the words to reassure him that all will be alright, that this won’t be the end of him. That he hasn’t been sullied by what the humans have done to him. You don’t understand that, but you do understand violence. So you can make promises like this. And he’ll know what you’re trying to say.

“I’ll kill them all,” you say, and you know he hears _I’m sorry you had to go through that_ and _I want to make it better_ and _you’re still worth being loved_ and _I love you._ He knows you well enough by now. And you know him well enough to be assured he’ll get it.

He reaches up and traces over one of the soldered marks across his chassis where they tore him open. You move your servo, big and built to break things, and spread your digits to cover them. You know that pretending they aren’t there won’t help in the long run, but it helps him now. You let him grab your hand and move it where he needs it to be.

“There’s one,” he says, “with a scar across his face. You leave that one for me.”

“I will,” you say. “I promise,” you say. And the two of you don’t break promises.

He gives a jerky nod. Then shuffles and rearranges the two of you so he can press his face against your plating, and you wrap your arms around him to hide him from the world. He’ll bounce back. He always does. He’ll be back to strutting around the halls like he’s Primus’s gift to the universe, and you’ll compliment him enough that he’ll believe it too. Things will go back to normal.

They always do.

* * *

“I’ll come back soon,” he’d said before leaving, “I promise.”

You had waited. Waited until Dreadwing had returned, scuffed and scowling. He had seen you waiting, narrowed his optics, and kept walking. No one else had followed. The bridge had closed. 

_Soon,_ he’d said. Soon, which could mean within the next few minutes or within a week. He’s not one for precise schedules. He’s never been. 

You tell yourself he’ll be back soon. You make excuses. His life signal isn’t showing up because of a technical malfunction. You can’t reach his ping because he’s out of range, or there’s electromagnetic interference from the planet’s sun. He won’t answer your comms because he’s distracted, busy with something else. 

He’s still alive. (You have to believe he’s still alive. You’re not sure what you’ll do if it isn’t true.) He’ll come back soon.

He had promised. And the two of you don’t break promises. 

So you wait.

* * *

“I am Cylas,” it says, tilting its head, “take me to your leader.”

This hadn’t been what you’d expected when you’d seen his life signal come back online. You hadn’t dared to hope, and that had been a good thing.

It takes you a moment to realize what you’re seeing. At first you think it’s a hallucination, borne from too many nights without recharge and too many days without refuel. You see cherry red plating (that’s faded and scuffed in a way he would never have been okay with) and you see a pair of obtrusive tires (that he’d always lamented were inconvenient, that he’d always said he’d find another way to integrate) and you see a single red optic (that he’d done his best to find a matching replacement for and failed) and you see a slick grin (that had been directed at you so many times, though never with so much cruelty) and then you see red. You barely register the many servos holding you back.

You’re mad. You’ve never been this mad, especially not in anything that could be considered his direction. But now you’re mad, you’re furious, you want to fix whatever’s wrong by ripping it apart because that’s the only way you know how to fix things. But you can’t. Because it looks like _him._

You do as you’re told. You follow orders. Even if it makes you sick to even be in the same room, even if you’d rather run and never look back, you follow orders. He’d always liked that about you. How obedient you were.

You follow orders.

So when Megatron looks at it with disgust and tells you to do as you’d like, you do. You follow your orders. He’d have done something different, probably, if your roles were reversed. He wouldn’t have gotten hung up on such things like emotion. Sentimentalities. He’d have taken the opportunity to learn something, most likely. A melding of machine and organic, it was such a novelty. The things he could’ve learned.

But he wouldn’t be learning anything. Because he was dead, and there was this parasite using him like a puppet. So even if it pains your spark, even if it makes you feel like curling up and sobbing your optics out, you sneer. At him. At the thing stringing him around. The panicked pleading is nothing more than white noise. It’s not his voice. It’s not him.

You raise your weapon.

You realize belatedly (as you see the hint of a scarred face through jagged and torn plating, stained and scuffed and so many things he would shudder at seeing) that you’re breaking a promise.

In your defense, though, he did it first.


End file.
